Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, and the world

The Humanist Symposium

To my regular readers: Not too long ago, I (and thousands of others) stumbled across an article titled Atheists and Anger, an articulate, well-thought-out piece which I highly recommend. It had the welcome side effect of introducing me to the wonderful writing of Greta Christina. (Whose themes range far beyond atheism and are not for everybody… read at your own risk. In case you end up wondering: no, I am not into spanking.)

It was on Greta Christina’s blog that I learned about a new way to share love and traffic among like-minded blogs, called a BlogCarnival. My own piece on Raising a Non-Believer was hosted soon thereafter by The Humanist Symposium, and now I’m doing my bit in return.

The themes of the articles below may include (according to the guidelines):

The happiness and freedom of life as an atheist, or other positive aspects to living a life without religious belief

Efforts to evangelize for atheism, and stories of people who have recently deconverted from religion

How to find meaning and purpose in a godless life

How non-religious people deal with weddings, child-raising, deaths, and other significant life events

Posts that stir up the human sense of awe and wonder

The ethics and moral philosophy of the non-religious

How nonbelievers can foster and nourish a sense of community

Here, without further ado, are the articles. The quotes below each are their authors’ descriptions, where such were provided.

“In a world with no God and no afterlife, death — like life — doesn’t have any purpose or meaning except the meaning we create. So what meaning can we create for it? Here is one idea: death as a deadline, for those of us who are deadline-driven.”

“Recently, I heard a racial slur against Jews because of what they
supposedly did to Jesus Christ. This insult was not against the Jews
that were alive two thousand years ago but against the Jews living
today.”

An adventure into how much freedom as humans we actually have. How does religion affect our freedom, how morality is affected through our choices and attention taken to our inner self. I think this might be a long one!

From D: I haven’t had time to write anything new myself this week that fits the theme, but those who are new to my site can check out the links on the left for some older musings of mine on atheism.

Though it hasn’t been submitted as part of the Symposium, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in questions of morality and religion read Steven Pinker’s recent NYT article on The Moral Instinct.

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One thought on “The Humanist Symposium”

I read this in several of the articles (or in my musings on them): Having a god show up at the end and, like Shecky Green, coming up with a snaappy punchline — I can think of nothing more horrible. Well, perhaps knowing the punchline in advance, as those folks with no tolerance for ambiguity do — that might be worse.

Having all the events of your life — the death of your parents, the sun through the trees at a place you love, the love of your lover, the joy of your friends — reduced to mere build-up to some stupid punchline by some sadist of a god — that would be meaningless.